I did a lot of research recently on phono preamps, because I realised that if I upgrade my current audio preamp, it likely will not have a phono preamp feature. I have two URL's I'll try to remember to enter later, that seem the most trustworthy resources on the topic.

I picked out my phono preamp but may not need to buy it after all, as my first choice for a new audio preamp actually has a phono preamp section (rare these days). At the lower budget levels, your best bets are probably the aforementioned Radial Engineering DI, and the Bellari pedal-shaped tube preamp.

Anyway, I concluded that the Graham Slee phono preamps are probably the best bang-for-buck these days and that the likely qualitative difference (based on reviews, audio specs, recorded samples, etc.) is more than the price difference vis a vis the Radial DI, etc. It is their mid-range unit that most interest me due to bang-for-buck and overall quality. I recall it costing around $400 and being direct-order only.

There is a lot more to phono preamplification than merely applying the RIAA curve. A dedicated phono preamp is a must, if you want quality results. You'll need to find out if you use an MM or MC cartridge (moving magnet or moving coil), and the general specs of the cartridge, as some phono preamps are adjustable and others aren't. For those that aren't, depending on the vintage of your cartridge, you may not fall into the spec range of the assumptions of a budget phono preamp such as those $40 jobs that dominate the listings on most e-stores.

Sweetwater and B&H carry the better budget phono preamps (those that are $200 and under). The more esoteric ones are $1000 and up. Which is why I recommend looking at the Graham Slee products if you're willing to spend just a bit more to get much higher quality results and to cover a wider range of cartridges for more flexibility in what to use.

You will notice that the output gain is considerably different between all of these products, and of course a well-designed phono preamp with more gain available will be more efficient and preserve much more detail. Specs alone don't tell the story, which is why I found a couple of trusted on-line sources for reviewing and comparing phono preamps, and then chose the one that seemed best bang for buck without breaking the bank.

mhschmieder wrote: At the lower budget levels, your best bets are probably the aforementioned Radial Engineering DI, and the Bellari pedal-shaped tube preamp.

A trusted source also pointed towards the Radial, which at the moment is probably near the outer edge of my budget for this undertaking.

I will scope out the Graham Slee preamp specs to see what the differences might be.

There is a lot more to phono preamplification than merely applying the RIAA curve. A dedicated phono preamp is a must, if you want quality results. You'll need to find out if you use an MM or MC cartridge (moving magnet or moving coil), and the general specs of the cartridge, as some phono preamps are adjustable and others aren't. For those that aren't, depending on the vintage of your cartridge, you may not fall into the spec range of the assumptions of a budget phono preamp such as those $40 jobs that dominate the listings on most e-stores.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll check the specs of my turntable which is only 6 years old.

Sweetwater and B&H carry the better budget phono preamps (those that are $200 and under). The more esoteric ones are $1000 and up. Which is why I recommend looking at the Graham Slee products if you're willing to spend just a bit more to get much higher quality results and to cover a wider range of cartridges for more flexibility in what to use. such as those $40 jobs that dominate the listings on most e-stores.

I found some site last night with preamps ranging from about $2,500 to$11,000. I just stared at it in disbelief, then laughed.

You will notice that the output gain is considerably different between all of these products, and of course a well-designed phono preamp with more gain available will be more efficient and preserve much more detail. Specs alone don't tell the story, which is why I found a couple of trusted on-line sources for reviewing and comparing phono preamps, and then chose the one that seemed best bang for buck without breaking the bank.

OK, even in your stated budget range, there is a Graham Slee product that might outcompete the Radial and Bellari gear, and if I'm not mistaken, they have a trade-up policy (this is common with direct-sales audiophile vendors).

I'll leave you to your own devices at this point, as I have found my culled stack of printouts (untrusted sources were thrown out first):

The Graham Slee links are too long to type in, so best bet is to Google on their most popular, mid-ranged product, Gram Amp 2 Special Edition (or SE) Phono Preamp (the company name is abbreviated GSP). The main direct sales vendors are LP Tunes, and LP Gear.

Here is one shorter link that will quickly get you to many of their products (and a couple of the others recommended at the general discussion sites above):

As for those ultra-expensive phono preamps, that's nothing compared to the $72,000 turntables that are now found at the more insane end of the audiophile market.

I am pro-audiophile and feel one gets more bang for buck (and 20-25 years or more lifespan vs. five years for consumer gear), but never recommend anything at a crazy price, except for the rich and famous who have money to burn. It isn;t necessary to spend that much, and often high-end quality can be had for less money than mediocre quality. It's called "smart shopping" . The old adage that you get what you pay for simply isn't true.

I should add that the Radial DI for phonographs is too new to be covered by those two articles referenced above, so don't assume from its exclusion that it wouldn't come recommended by audiophiles.

In general, however, I would say that Radial's special expertise is in making good use of Jensen transformers. I have not yet read anything about their op amps (if that's the methodology they use for boosting signal -- there are other ways to skin that cat). It might be worth searching in Gearslutz to see if anyone there compares the Radial phono preamp/DI to more specialised audiophile brands.

I didn't notice that I had stapled a few forms together, so that initial link for "enhanced audio" is the wrong one in terms of general discussions on phono preamps. They are a custom shop, but nonetheless their writeups are worth reading.

More useful is the writeup on phono preamps at amazon.com of all places. The URL is cut off on my printout, so probably best to search on the article name "Learn all about phono preamps". It goes through terminology and helps guide you through compatibility issues with various moving coil and moving magnet cartridges

I should have mentioned earlier that one major difference is that moving coil cartridges require an additional preamp stage, and not all dedicated phono preamps or standard audio preamps (or integrated amps) supply this. Part of the reason is it is expensive to do right, but the main reason is that moving coil catridges are rare these days except at the super high end of the audiophile market.

Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that even the typical impedances of the more common moving magnet cartridges have been changing significantly in the past ten years. So I cannot overstress how important it is to find a good match. I had to spend quite a lot of time on-line before I found proper specs for my cartridge, as it was canceled years ago and the literature that came with it didn't list its impedance.

Note that they recommend Graham Slee's lowest-end product (80 pounds sterling, probably $150 in the USA), the "Gram 1", as best bang-for-buck in the below-$200 range.

As for the ART phono preamp, I seem to recall that the version without the built-in USB received good reviews. Especially with lower-priced gear, it's best to stay away from products with computer interfaces (USB, firewire, etc.) as that is redundant for most on this forum and accounts for much of the price, meaning less attention paid to the rest of the circuitry.

You can also use a record player that doesn't need a preamp.
There are some now who have Line outs, USB outs or even SPDIF output.

I use a Denon DP-DJ150 for vinyl to digital transfers.
It has Phono, Line and S/PDIF outputs, 33, 45 and 78 rpm and a speed change of up/down 15% with the option of changing the record's rotation speed without changing pitch (on line and digital outs only).

It's been working a charm for a few years already and has allowed me to give my clients lots of good clean transfers.

For digital prcessing i'm using Adobe's Audition.

Last edited by resolectric on Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Graham Slee SE does look very nice. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the @ $50 devices that I'm sure get the job done. At the other end: 11k.

So the price of the Amp 2 SE is very sweet.

The Radial, even with features geared towards DJs, seems like a sensible choice and is within reach at the moment. But I'm not in a hurry at this point, so my options are open. I suppose for an extra $120, the SE is also within reach in a couple more weeks.

So perhaps the plan of action is a little more research and patience. The whole audiophile world is kind of crazy$$$. One could go through endless upgrades$$$ to incrementally improve the listening experience. The Graham Slee does seem to be the darling of that world because of the bang-for-the-$$$.

I have a Sumiko Pro-Ject 1.2 turntable with a Sumiko Oyster moving magment cartridge which according the Radial manual is the most prevalent type out there to date.

Again, thank you for your insights and very useful links which I have bookmarked.

resolectric wrote:You can also use a record palyer that doesn't need a preamp.There are some now who have Line outs, USB outs or even SPDIF output.

I use a Denon DP-DJ150 for vinyl to digital transfers.It has Phono, Line and S/PDIF outputs, 33, 45 and 78 rpm and a speed change of up/down 15% with the option of changing the record's rotation speed without changing pitch (on line and digital outs only).

It's been working a charm for a few years already and has allowed me to give my clients lots of good clean transfers.

For digital prcessing i'm using Adobe's Audition.

The Denon does look very nice. Having the various outputs built right into the unit sidesteps the connectivity issue. Having the option for 78s is also very cool. In my teens, I found a bunch of 78s in the attic and made cassette recordings of them which I just recently discovered in my basement. I'm looking forward to using RX to clean them up for CD.

Didn't Adobe Audition get a bad review recently for its restoration stuff; in particular its denoising component? Maybe that was here in this forum on one of the audio restoration topics vs. in a magazine. At any rate, whatever gets the job done for someone and makes their clients happy is alright for them, so I only mention this to encourage anyone considering it to read up on it a bit before assuming it's also a good solution for them. Overall though Audition looks like a well-designed product, and the new version may be worlds apart from previous versions based on some early reports.

That's great that the Denon accepts 78's. I can't remember if my Stanton does or not. I foolishly sold a Rega glass turntable before moving to California in late 1991, thinking there were so many earthquakes here that I couldn't play records . After many years of waiting for more obscure stuff to NOT come out on CD, I gave up and bought the Stanton turntable a few years ago. It's actually pretty good quality considering it isn't audiophile, so I guess the DJ's are a more demanding lot than typical consumers.

My parents have a large collection of 78's, all of them classical, and by now most available on CD. To me that was one of the very few bonuses of the switch from vinyl to CD, that there was an initial rush to release a lot of long out of print classical stuff. In some cases I'm not just talking about performances (like Pablo Casals) but composers (such as Darius Milhaud and Nikolai Medtner) for whom there were no other recordings.

It is unfortunate though that 16 rpm records do not seem to be covered by many modern turntables. This was the speed of choice for spoken word recordings, and I'm not sure how many of those have been released on CD. My family has a bunch of those back east as well, and I had hoped to eventually do some transfers and restoration work on them.

There are some obscure formats that didn't live long and that I only learned about at the AES Show in San Francisco last October. Some of these came between the spindles, acetate, early 78's, etc. and later vinyl. Ever since then, I've wondered if there are only one or two restoration houses in the world that cover those formats (that have the appropriate playback hardware, for instance).

As for finding stuff on 78's, some of the more obscure formats, etc., while visiting family this spring near Boston, my brother and I headed up to Salem MA, Rockport, and Gloucester, and in Gloucester discovered an amazing record store that used to be in Cambridge and a few other locations, called "Mystery Train", which is two floors high and has just about every 78, 45-box-set, 10" vinyl LP at 33-1/2, reel-to-reel-tape, 8-track tape, etc., that I ever saw or owned as a child, along with other formats so bizarre that I don't quite remember what they were. Unfortunately they told me that they couldn't afford the rent anymore and were going to consolidate onto a single floor and start doing the more obscure formats strictly as an on-line service on eBay.

I just got back from visiting my alma mater in Bloomington IN and was surprised to find three or four mostly-vinyl record stores downtown, also with many recordings that are otherwise unavailable. These were not DJ-oriented stores like most of the vinyl shops in larger metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and San Fransicsco.

Meanwhile, my brother forwarded me an article yesterday about how vinyl is making a comeback and will likely outlive CD's (as distinguished from other delivery mechanisms for digital audio). Unfortunately I don't have that link at hand. It is pointed out that vinyl does not support as much compression as CD's and so simultaneous releases these days tend to me more dynamic on vinyl than on CD where the Loudness Wars prevail.

I suspect that most people interested in restoration are focused primarily on material that simply isn;t available elsewise, as it is time-consuming to do the transfers and most would rather just spend $10 to buy the CD vs. trying to save money by transferring their own vinyl. With that in mind, I am also wondering if there is any independent organisation supportive of paying the proper royalties and making one's transfers available to others, since the labels themselves aren't doing it and in many cases may no longer exist (even if absorbed by larger corporations over time).

As an experiment I dragged out my 27 year-old Technics SL-1800 turntable with Shure M95ED cartridge and connected the outputs to the fully turned up Mic/Guitar preamp inputs on my 828Mk2 (BLA mods) with no RIAA preamp in the chain. I recorded some tunes from a Missing Persons LP that printed at about -12 to -18 dBfs and sounded thin and tinny, as expected. Then I inserted an instance of the MOTU 2 band Parametric EQ and dialed in an approximation of the RIAA eq curve as compared with a version of the curve I found on a website. The result? Surprisingly good, although still lacking in overall gain. Adding 20dB of gain with a Trim insert after the Parametric EQ made it all good. If i knew how to attach an image to this post I'd show you the parametric settings.